Movie: All Is Lost (J:C. Chandor, 2013)
I like All Is Lost for the same reasons I've become a fan of Powell & Pressburger, and Truly Madly Deeply. It is a great portrayal of dignity under duress. Chandor doesn't provide any background to Robert Redford - we don't even get to learn his name, and he barely utters a word aside from a few swears, but when he wakes up to a waterlogged cabin in the middle of the Indian Ocean it becomes immediately clear what kind of man this is. Concerned, but unperturbed he finds that a loose freight container has lodged itself to his ship and goes to work, one step at a time. First the container has to be dislodged, then the water has to be removed and finally the hole in the hull should be closed. Every action "Our Man" takes is measured and performed with maximum commitment and awareness. There is no hint of rush, and the most urgent thing is always the task at hand, not to be abandoned until either a solution has been found or all hope is gone.
I have no sailing experience, but get the sense that even in these opening scenes the situation is far more hopeless than the film or Redford lets on. That's certainly the case midway through when the sailboat is about to sink, forcing him to take out the emergency life raft. Before abandoning ship he goes back once more to take some last minute necessities including conserved food, flares and cutlery. To find each of these he has to hold his breath in the submerged ship and rummage under water for the correct drawer. Chandor takes the time to show every dive back in, filming in calm long takes, mirroring Redford's deliberate composure. There is more to this than just presenting him as a seasoned sailor. Undoubtedly, Redford's attitude is practical, connected to his experience and will increase his chances of survival more than blind panic, but it's also about living, and surviving, the right way. Death may come anyway, facing it on your own terms is the best you can do, and the film consistently seeks to heighten our awareness of what it means to act on those terms in this context. When Redford is navigating a storm forcing him to put on his rain jacket. Chandor shows the entire process of him deciding he needs it, finding the box where it's kept, taking the jacket out, putting the box back in its place, and going back outside with his jacket on to continue the fight against the storm. Most disaster movies would cut most of the middle part to focus on the exciting action, but if all may be lost anyway, the meaningfulness of the process takes precedence over the results.
I had previously seen this film in 2013 in the cinema, amongst friends. We all liked it very much, but I was somewhat disappointed by the ambiguous ending, especially because I was the only in my group who thought he survived. If we take the final shot at face value, Redford dying would force a spiritual/religious reading on the film that I felt was disconnected from the rationalism that came before. However, seeing it now, Redford surviving feels like it would be an even bigger betrayal of the film's existentialism, which veers into the irrational as the end comes closer. It's unlikely that a freighter passing that close to a life raft wouldn't notice the fireworks emanating from its flares, and its conspicuously unlucky to become surrounded by sharks just when your effort to catch a small fish is finally rewarded, but sometimes no matter how much you do the right thing, the mysterious forces of nature will simply turn against you.
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